sometimes it really disturbs me … #6. i didn’t know how effective it is. i just know that i wanted to do it.

I sort of don’t want to reblog this image, because I somehow feel… I don’t know, irresponsible disseminating this information, I guess. But it brought so strongly to mind something that happened a few days ago that’s been kind of haunting me that I felt the need to post it.

On the phone with my mother the other night, she mentioned the sudden death of a friend of hers. This was not a very close friend, but a woman she had worked with periodically for quite some time, who worked in another office in the physical sciences at the university where my mother works. They got along well, had things in common, went to jazz bars together after work meetings. This woman had struggled with bipolar disorder (I feel strange writing that phrase–how can we not struggle with it?) for a long time, and then very recently had gone through a very rough breakup. She was a chemist. My mother said that when she learned this woman had died, before anyone told her how she just knew. She made her own cyanide.